Short story: "Being a Girl Becomes Me"

Before it was renamed “Deep Deuce,” it was my home.  Row after row of small, white wood-frame bungalows, a sprinkling of three-story boarding houses, a corner grocery store, and a beer joint along with a sprinkling of small business located here and there. Sure, you had to search around but what ever you wanted could be found. We lived a few minutes from downtown where there was a Woolworth, a Veazey’s Drugstore, and an ice cream shop. Long after it was illegal, “separate but equal” existed. As long as this was understood, the drugstore was peaceful and quiet, just  the usual white faces staring as my mother refilled a prescription or ordered ice-cream cones for the five of us—to go.  We could order, but we couldn’t sit. A few years later, the drug store was sued because of it’s “separate but equal” business practices. By then, we didn’t want to sit. There were other places that were happy to see us.

Downtown was within walking distance, but to those in our neighborhood, it might have seemed miles away because all we knew and trusted were the streets that enclosed a one-block radius of people living, loving, and fighting day to day. My very first memory is sitting with my older brother and sister, the twins, as I liked to call them and feeling like a spider on the wall of a warm, but dimly-lit room where people were sleeping, whispering or arguing. I remember seeing my mother on her knees, her palms together in prayer every morning before the start of her day.

One morning, things were different. My father had left for work, my mother was on her knees and we three were playing quietly in one of the bedrooms, just the three of us. My baby brother at the time was asleep in his cage. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a shadow appeared and stood next to our bedroom door. I remember running and sliding underneath the bed hoping it was a good place hide. After a moment or two, I heard the floor boards creak as the shadow entered and then left the room where my mother was praying. Was it a miracle or was it the headlights from my father’s car that scared the shadow away? Our father had left his chef’s hat and apron, something every cook needed if he worked at the Pier 7.

I always thought I was two things--a boy and a mother, but much of my life I felt like a failure because I wasn’t much of either. “Boy’s don’t cry,” I always heard, and I liked to cry.  Mothers never cry in front of the children, I always heard. This I learned early on  and knew for certain, until I saw my mother cry for the very first time after she and our father divorced.

My first memory of crying was when I was three years old.  I was shamed into tears because my mother wanted me to wear a dress, but I wanted to wear red jeans and matching red jacket. I don’t remember if my bad behavior got me a spanking or not. All I remember is feeling overheated, shaky, sweaty and mad as a jersey bull—never saw one, but heard about them from my mama’s papa, as she liked to call her dad. My crying started innocent enough. I didn’t know what it meant to disobey. All I knew was, I didn’t want to wear that ugly, itchy dress.

 I recall sitting cross-legged in a corner of the room until my father came home. I remember my defiance and absolute resolve. As soon as I saw the flimsy, pink lacy-looking dress, I had started to itch. I decided then and there that I wasn’t wearing it, wasn’t going to my room, and wasn’t gonna stop crying—at least not until my father came home and saw evidence of her crime—trying to turn me into a Tinkerbell fairy or Snow White. When I heard the car pull up the driveway, but I didn’t budge.As soon as he opened the door and laid eyes on me, sobbing hysterically, my daddy opened his arms, gave me a gigantic hug and smiled. 

After he sat me on his knees, he sang me a favorite song. It was about the Big Bad Wolf. The whole time I was with my father that day, I didn’t see him take his eyes off me, not even long enough to offer my mother a smile. I just remember seeing his smiling face turned toward me, the gigantic hands reaching down to pull me to safety. My father sang nursery rhymes to all of his “kiddies,” but I knew I was his favorite because he sang the songs I liked best.

It was like that, my daddy leading the way and me following, stuffing freshly dug fishing worms in my jacket pocket or stepping into his boot prints just to see how big they were—at least, until the divorce and he moved away. I was ten years old. I remember standing on the corner with the others, watching his tail light blink to signal a left-hand turn. At the time I thought my father would return home late at night, just like he always did, just to sit the four of us kids on his lap, tell us a bedtime story, sing us a song and send us off to bed. It was impossible to sleep. I just wanted him to hurry home so he could pick me up and give me a hug like he always did when I felt afraid, and on that particular day, I felt very afraid. It wasn’t something you told anybody unless you wanted to feel like a girl.

I never considered how my mother must have felt—waiting in the bed for a husband whose arms were full of children. Never understood why she insisted that I wear dresses that always itched, always made ruffled sounds, had weird names like taffeta, gingham, and dotted swiss, and never failed to get ripped, causing me to get scolded or spanked. At thirteen, I was as tall as any boy but they didn’t treat me the same anymore, so I tried on a dress or two. I stopped climbing trees, started hanging around the house, and even learned how to cook because my father was a cook.

I finally forgave my mother for trying to turn me into something sweet and prickly because I decided she was trying to prepare me for days like this. Now, after all of these years, I have to admit she succeeded, and when I look at myself in the mirror, dabbing perfume behind my ears adorned with shiny gold earrings, I’m so glad she did. I'm not man enough to thank her, but being a girl becomes me.
(c) M.D. Johnson (2013)